5 Strategies for Building Relationships as an Instructional Coach

This piece was originally written as a guest blog post by Megan Ryder, instructional coach in Illinois, as part of our Your Coaching Toolbox series.

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What You Can Expect

Megan Ryder shares her top strategies for not only building relationships with the teachers she works with, but also maintaining them. Below are her five practiced strategies and a brief quote for each from her original post. For a more detailed overview of the strategies, be sure to check out her original post!

The Strategies

1. Be Present — “At the beginning of the school year, I remind the teachers where they can find me when I am not working with a teacher in a classroom. My schedule and location vary from day to day and, since I have multiple buildings, I indicate my location during the day by using the status updates in Gmail Chat or Hangouts. Just as important, to ‘be present’, I’ve taken note where teachers in each of my buildings gather before, during, and after school. This allows me to join in personal conversations about everyone’s weekend, pets, children, etc.–getting to know teachers on a personal level is important when building relationships.”
2. Communicating Your Role and Sharing Success — “Every year I have given the same message in each of my buildings—just in a different manner and every year I have requested time from my building’s principals to be able to do this. Their support has been wonderful and has been an integral part in communicating how I can support teachers as their colleague.”
3. Visiting Classrooms — “In between teacher coaching, collaboration, and co-teaching, I take time to visit the classrooms. Since my role is non-evaluative and I am a supportive colleague, this helps in building relationships with the teachers. My visits are short, but they have a purpose.”
4. Little Things — “Throughout the year I create mailbox notes to communicate and connect with the teachers. Some notes are little ‘pick me up’ notes to encourage teachers. Others focus on reminders of how I can support teachers after district institute days. Even though I send occasional emails to all of the teachers, I also try to create paper notes because this communication method stands out more than an email.”
5. Using Twitter to Connect — “The tweets from teachers in our district are my priority. . . . I can use teacher tweets to start up conversations that lead to coaching and collaboration opportunities, and teachers now come to me and ask if I have seen their recent tweets to talk about learning targets and classroom activities. Retweeting teacher tweets can help share our district’s story with the global education community.”

About the Guest Blogger

Megan Ryder started her educational career on figure skates, teaching basic skills to skaters of all ages while working on her elementary education degree at Western Michigan University. Megan completed her masters degree in Instructional Technology from Lewis University in 2012. After teaching fifth grade for seven years, she became an instructional coach for two elementary schools and one middle school.

She is also an Apple Distinguished Educator, Class of 2015. Follow Megan on Twitter @MrsRyder58 and @365DaysEDUCoach for daily instructional coaching ideas, tips, and resources.